Optimizing blood culture diagnostics through laboratory automation: reducing turnaround time and improving clinical outcomes.

ABSTRACT: Bloodstream infections pose significant clinical challenges, requiring rapid and accurate diagnostics to guide timely antimicrobial therapy. Although efforts to reduce turnaround time (TAT) have focused on emerging molecular techniques and rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) methods, these innovations currently complement rather than replace standard protocols. To balance innovation with reliability, we investigated the impact of integrating laboratory automation into the blood culture diagnostic workflow while preserving conventional pathogen identification via mass spectrometry and AST. In this single-center, prospective study, we compared key performance indicators between a historical cohort (March-August 2023; 192 episodes, 110 patients) and an intervention cohort (March-

SUBMITTER: Qin J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12671119 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature